


The Mark of Lot

by quickmanifyouloveme



Series: The Idyll & The Mark of Lot [2]
Category: BioShock Infinite
Genre: Accidental Incest, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Attempted Rape/Non-Con, Dreams and Nightmares, F/M, Parent/Child Incest, Paris (City), World War I
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-25
Updated: 2018-01-25
Packaged: 2019-03-09 04:00:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,478
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13473246
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quickmanifyouloveme/pseuds/quickmanifyouloveme
Summary: Sequel to my last Infinite fic, The Idyll. Booker and Elizabeth have carved out a real life in Paris, but Elizabeth has a series of nightmares that she can't ignore.





	The Mark of Lot

**Author's Note:**

> All you need to know from The Idyll is Booker and Elizabeth escaped Columbia after Daisy's death and settled down in Paris. Heed the warnings. There is romance, but this is not a romantization.

Paris is perfect, and Booker is a tamed beast. He still ties Elizabeth’s corset every morning and undoes it every night, the scarred pads of his fingers catching on the silk laces. He’s afraid to pull too tight, still. He holds her parasol as they walk through Paris’s grime-riddled streets, as if Elizabeth cares about freckles on her cheeks or shoulders. He gave her his pistol when they arrived in the city, and each morning he watches as she tucks it inside her skirts after breakfast, but he still checks that she has it and it’s armed before he leaves for work at dusk. He thinks she doesn’t know what he does. He forgets that she’s killed, too, and she remembers exactly how it smells. No matter how much he gentles himself for her, how fully he commits to their idyllic life, he’s still a lion with a thorn in his paw—or a brand on his fist.

She loves him, so she lets him lie. He’s the first person she ever met, and she’s aware that there are better men in the world than Booker DeWitt, but she’s met men who are far worse and she suspects there never was, nor will be, anyone else for her. When they lie together, her head fits in the ditch of his collarbone like an eye in its socket.

Aside from the rain, the sewers, and the gunpowder on Booker’s hands at night, Paris is a perfect sanctuary. She thanks God every day that she only ever sees Comstock in her dreams—until the nightmares change.

She’s always had nightmares. Songbird was her protector, but he couldn’t check under her bed for ghosts or vampires. For the most part, Elizabeth dreams about characters from books she’s read, or tears she visited briefly. Tonight, she’s back in her tower, brushing her hair in front of her vanity, her dress bright blue and her stockings unripped, when the door to her bedroom cracks open.

“Hello?” She drops the brush as she jumps to her feet, and fumbles for the pistol that of course isn’t in her skirts. The Prophet, himself, steps inside, in his black suit and hard boots. Elizabeth’s never seen him in person, only in portraits; he looks older and thinner than in the pictures. She backs up against the wall and stares.

“Child, I won’t hurt you.” He walks toward her.

“Stop right there!”

He averts his eyes, as if contrite, but doesn’t stop. “Although, I suppose I already have.”

“Get out!” She clenches her hands into fists. When he extends his palm, she raises her fists, but Comstock simply grabs her shoulder and guides her to sit at the vanity again. Stunned, she sits and watches as his reflection bends to the floor and picks up her brush. He gathers her hair together, as long and clean as if she had never cut it, and stokes it. Elizabeth shivers, frozen.

“No, I always knew I needed you, Elizabeth. Beautiful Elizabeth.” He pulls the ends of her hair taut and starts brushing, from the crown of her head to the middle of her back. Her heart shakes. “Even God knew He would need an heir one day.”

“I’m not Jesus.”

His eyes meet hers in the mirror: sea glass green. Somehow familiar. Elizabeth wonders if it’s possible to feel déjà vû in a dream. “You’re not. You’re something far more powerful.”

“I’m not a _thing_. And you’re not my father!” She desperately wants to leap up, run away, disappear into a tear, but Comstock keeps slowly untangling her hair, smoothing it one brushstroke at a time.

He smiles to himself. Close up, she can see how he could’ve once been handsome, charismatic enough to lead soldiers, clergymen, and scientists to his empire in the sky. “What is a father, if not the love of a girl’s life? And aren’t I the love of your life?”

He rests his left hand on her shoulder, and for the first time, in the mirror, she sees a brand, muscle-red: A.D.. She chokes on nothing, her gut roils. His voice sounds like a stage whisper echoing through a tunnel: “Aren’t I? Pretty Elizabeth, aren’t I?”

She wakes to Booker’s arm around her waist, her nails gouging the hide of his wrist. She could be sweating or crying. She looks down at Booker’s hand, hoping to God that the mark miraculously isn’t there, the one he refused to tell her about, the one secret she lets him keep. Of course, the ugly thing remains. She wishes she could scrub it off. Instead, she settles back against his chest, lets the steady rhythm of his breath guide hers, and closes her eyes until dawn comes.

-

Elizabeth can handle nightmares. Booker is no stranger to them either, and occasionally they’ll soothe one another in their own particular ways. He’ll rub her back, his large palm easily spanning the width of her shoulder blades; she’ll make him coffee and count his crows’ feet, the fine lines bordering his lips and nose, the nicks and pits on his face from years of shrapnel and scars. She’ll be silent, but she won’t look away from him, won’t let him retreat into himself and wall up.

The morning after the Comstock nightmare, she doesn’t say anything to Booker, but she can tell he suspects something. Ever the silent type, he won’t broach the subject if she doesn’t, but he will watch her, waiting for a slip-up or a breakdown. She’s constantly frustrated by how easily he elbows his way into every facet of her life, even parts that hurt, or that she’d rather keep to herself. That day, Booker does a lot of watching and Elizabeth does a lot of reading. Later, he kisses her cheek goodbye as he leaves for his next job, and she doesn’t even look up.

-

Life goes on normally for a week or so. She never does tell him about the dream, but he stops waiting for her to start the conversation and seems to forget about it. The first couple nights after, her heart picks up and her hands shake before she gets into bed; she berates herself as a silly girl and lets Booker’s presence comfort her.

When the next nightmare starts, she doesn’t even recognize it. It’s a normal afternoon in their apartment: Elizabeth, hair down, stands at the stove and pours water into a kettle for tea. The anemic Parisian sunshine, thinned into wisps of light by an ever-present layer of clouds, slats through the western window onto the floor. Booker leans against the counter next to her, whittling a piece of wood with a paring knife. The kettle full, she lights a match, flicks it onto the burner, and sets the kettle on top to boil.

She reaches into the cabinet above her head for their tin of loose tea leaves. Booker lays his knife and wood on the counter, and she feels more than sees him stalk toward her, settle behind her, and sling his arms over her hips. He laces his fingers over her stomach, palms down. She laughs.

“You can’t let me make tea in peace?”

“You don’t want to be left in peace,” he mumbles, nosing the hair behind her ear. Elizabeth rolls her eyes but lets him pull her body back against his hips.

“Whatever you’re in the mood for, it won’t be over before the water starts boiling.”

He reaches around her and turns off the gas. “Now we’ve got all day.” She can hear the smirk in his voice, can feel the pressure against her back. Her skin goes hot all over.

“Booker, come on.” She grabs the matchbox, but Booker tears it from her hand and chucks it across the counter. “Hey!”

His thick arms constrict around her waist. He backs her away from the stove, toward the middle of the room. She’s torn between going with it and relaxing into him, or stomping on his foot and pushing him away. He presses kisses from her ear to her chin, quickly and then slower, more deliberate.

“What do you think you’re doing?”

He ignores her. He sucks a bruise on her throat, while one of his hands leaves her belly and crawls down her thigh, rucks her skirt up high enough that he can unclip her garters. Her pulse throbs throughout her body. She decides to submit and go along with whatever he suddenly can’t wait for, when he starts talking:

“You smell so good. Sweet. Elizabeth, Elizabeth.” He groans and his head drops against her shoulder. “You taste just like your mother.”

The world stops. Her knees try to buckle. When his words finally slam into her, she wants to wrench away from him, but his hold is so strong and her body is so weak. He doesn’t seem to notice she’s become stone in his arms, just slides both his hands under her skirt to tug at her underwear. “Just like her,” he hisses. “Annabelle. My Anna.”

He lets go of her to unbuckle his belt, and she finds her fucking strength and runs.

-

She wakes up on the floor next to her— _their_ —bed, already puking, last night’s dinner and water and stomach acid dripping through the floorboards to the apartment below. She’s rattling like a hypothermic dog. As the panic recedes, she notices the blanket draped over her shoulder and hears the tap running in their bathroom. Booker walks in with a glass of water and a concerned scowl.

The sight of him makes her gag again. He steps closer, but she shakes her head profusely and her throat releases an awful, empty sound.

“Elizabeth?” He sounds hurt.

“Please, just—don’t. I need—I need—” She can’t catch her breath, and suddenly she’s clutching her stomach and sobbing. She doesn’t notice Booker rushing to her, but she feels him grab her and pull her onto his lap, settle her head against his chest. She wants to take comfort in his hands on her back, but she remembers the brand and cries harder. He shushes her and rocks her like a child.

She buries her face in the meat of his shoulder, uses it to muffle her screams. It’s a while before either of them tries to talk again. When he does, he says, “I love you. I need you to tell me what’s going on.”

Elizabeth takes a deep breath. “Nothing.”

“Elizabeth.”

“It was a stupid dream.”

“ _Elizabeth_.” She looks up at him for the first time; his jaw is trembling with fear and anger. “ _Please_.”

She can’t. She couldn’t ever. What would he think of her? “Booker, I don’t even know what to say. We both get nightmares all the time. This one was just bad. Don’t ask me to revisit it.”

At that, his gaze softens. He adjusts her in his arms, like she’s comforting him as much as he is her. “Fine. Drink some water.” He raises the cup to her lips, and she loves him more than anything, despite the viper in her gut hissing at his touch.

-

The nightmares don’t stop. She does get better at hiding them, slipping out of bed unnoticed, tiptoeing onto the terrace, and smoking a shaky cigarette until the dream fades and her body believes it’s safe again. Sometimes, in the dreams, she can fight back against Comstock, or Booker, or both, or one time a faceless woman she knew to be her mother. Sometimes, she can only watch while her body succumbs, willingly or not, aware that what she’s doing is wrong but unable to change a thing. Sometimes, she just sits in the black and watches a ramshackle crib sway from side to side, familiar but so far away.

She doesn’t tell Booker anything, no matter how often he asks. He wouldn’t get it. He hasn’t seen horrors like these. She’s not sure if he even had a family to ruin. She wakes up with him, takes solace in the routine of his hands, her corset, spends the day with him, goes to bed with him, and spends the night with a monster.

One day, she and Booker are sitting together in the den, her reading and him cleaning his gun, when the Luteces knock on their door. At the sound, Elizabeth stands, draws her pistol, and creeps forward. When she sees a twin pair of red heads through the peephole, she sighs and opens the door. The Luteces walk inside and hover in the middle of the den.

“This can’t be anything good.” Elizabeth doesn’t put her pistol away. She leans her hip against the side of Booker’s armchair and crosses her arms. Her eyes ache with exhaustion.

“What do you want?” Booker asks, setting his gun to the side.

Rosalind watches the two of them with the patient disinterest of a vulture, while Robert rubs his thumbs together and clears his throat.

Finally, Robert says it: “Comstock is dead.”

Elizabeth stares at him, eyes wide, until his words fully sink in. She thinks she’s going to throw up. She thinks she’s going to cry. “Please tell me you’re not lying.”

Rosalind shakes her head. “No, our Prophet is quite, permanently, dead. Once the cancer spread to his brain, he didn’t last the month.” She picks the dirt under her nails.

Booker is watching Elizabeth, looking up with an inscrutable expression on his face. He turns to Robert. “That’s good news, right?”

“Yes,” Robert says. “Without a leader, it’ll be too easy for the United States to reclaim Columbia. It’s all over.”

Elizabeth wipes the stinging nettles from her eyes and lets out a heavy breath. The news is far, far too good to be true. “You didn’t come here just to tell us that.”

For the first time, Rosalind smiles, a subtle twitch at the corner of her mouth. “No, we came here to warn you: you have to leave Paris. Within the week, preferably. In fact, it’s best to leave the continent.”

Booker takes Elizabeth’s hand and scowls at Rosalind, suspicious. “What did you two do?” Rosalind scoffs.

“We didn’t do anything. What’s coming in the next few years is a constant, and my brother insisted on telling you so you can get out of its way.” Rosalind turns her stone gaze on Elizabeth and regards her with something close to pity. “Paris was your dream. But I think perhaps, by now, it’s lost its luster.” Elizabeth squeezes Booker’s hand and refuses to look directly at Rosalind, focusing on the patchwork wallpaper behind her shoulder, for fear of what Rosalind may see in her.

Rosalind seems to see something, anyway: “Elizabeth, could you show me to the kitchen? I’d like to make some tea before we leave.” Elizabeth flinches, but lets go of Booker and leads her to the other room. Rosalind’s black heels click against the wood floor. She closes the door behind them.

Elizabeth is reaching for the kettle when Rosalind rests a hand on her shoulder and says, “I think you have some things to ask me.”

Elizabeth slumps over the sink and hangs her head, a boulder only held up by string. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I know more than you think. You are not the first girl with whom I’ve had this conversation, but I must say you’ve lasted the longest.” Rosalind watches her for a long moment. “Your powers of denial are almost as strong as your father’s.”

Elizabeth spins, wrenches her shoulder from Rosalind’s grasp, and spits at her. “You don’t know anything.”

“You’ve been having dreams.”

“You don’t know anything about me!”

“They haven’t been very pleasant dreams.”

“Or him, either!” Elizabeth lunges forward, trying to run, but Rosalind blocks her in.

“You have to trust them. Comstock may be dead, but—”

“ _But what_?” Elizabeth yells.

“—your father isn’t.” Rosalind is as expressive as Elizabeth’s ever seen her, her façade cracked like someone took a sledgehammer to a sculpture. Elizabeth can’t breathe, can’t even look at her. “Ask me what you need to ask me.”

Elizabeth screws her eyes shut, and all she can see is Booker, from that dream, his arms around her like hot iron bars, his voice reverent and strange. “Is he—are we—are they real? Are they true?”

Rosalind backs away slowly. “They are. Do you want to know the whole story?” Elizabeth opens her eyes and looks at nothing. She sinks to her knees, braces her hands on the tile. Rosalind tells her everything.

-

Elizabeth doesn’t know how much time passes until Rosalind cups her chin, once, and leaves. Elizabeth doesn’t know anything. Her skin is unfurling, her fingers unraveling into brittle red thread. She could be dreaming.

She blinks and Booker’s there, crouched beside her. She gags. It’s too familiar, too fucking familiar. Her awareness drifts in and out; she realizes he’s talking: “…she do to you? I’ll find her, just tell me what she did.”

“We just talked,” she grates out.

“I don’t believe that. You haven’t been telling me the truth, this whole time.”

She groans. “We did, we talked.”

His hand grips her forearm, and A.D. shines up at her like an ugly beacon. The sweat from her neck soaks the collar of her dress. “Why did you do it?”

Booker’s right hand starts kneading her back, her shoulder blades. “Huh?” He’s so close, she can smell the blood on his breath. The blood that must have flooded his mouth while he pressed hot iron to his flesh and let it smoke.

She grabs his marked hand and traces her jagged nail over each letter. “Why did you do this? Did someone make you?”

Booker tries to pull away, but she holds on tight. He shakes his head roughly, a dog bucking off fleas. “No. It was my choice. I don’t want to talk about it.”

“You don’t want to talk?” She laughs. Trembling, she pulls her pistol out of her dress pocket.

“Elizabeth, what are you doing?”

She rises to her feet and turns the pistol on him. He’s so beautiful, in his own way, a ragged cliff side hewn into a man. His sea glass eyes bright with fear. Cancer withered Comstock too young. “Tell me why you did it. Don’t lie.”

He scoffs and moves to stand up, but she butts the muzzle into his forehead. His lip trembles. “Why do you need to know all of a sudden?”

“Tell me! Who is it for? Your wife? Is it for Annabelle?” Her mother’s name turns her teeth into daggers.

Booker stops breathing. He stares up at her, pushes his head against her gun. Something in him snaps. “It’s for Anna. My daughter.”

Everything Rosalind said was true. Everything, everything. She’s thunderstorm-furious, but she starts to sob. “You want to know what Rosalind told me?” She can see his mind racing, his right hand twitching for the gun that’s in the living room. “Remember Annabelle. Look at me.” She pushes the pistol’s muzzle so hard it’ll leave a dent in his skull. “Don’t I look familiar, Daddy? Don’t I?”

“I don’t—Elizabeth, what are you saying?” he shouts. He reaches up, grabs her gun’s barrel, and shoves it away from his head. He tries to yank it from her, but she smacks his hand with it so hard something cracks.

“I’m not Elizabeth! I’m not a Comstock, I’m a fucking DeWitt!” She’s struggling to breathe through her tears. He nurses his right hand, pinky and ring finger bent to an awful angle, and refuses to look at her. “I’m the baby you didn’t want. You gave me away, but I’m still yours.”

“You’re not, you’re—”

“I’m what?”

“You’re Elizabeth.”

“No. Who am I?”

He sputters, lost. “You’re the girl I rescued from a tower.”

“No. Booker, please don’t lie to me. Who am I?”

“You’re the woman I love.” His voice cracks. He stares at the pistol. “You’re the love of my life.”

He sounds just like Comstock did, in that first dream. “When you let me go, you felt so bad you branded yourself. That was for Anna. Let me give you something from Elizabeth.” She takes a deep breath, aims for his unmarked, broken hand, and shoots.

-

As she throws her things in a bag, rushes to the station, buys a boat ticket to America—the whole time, all she can think about is how much she loves the beast in the kitchen. No matter what she learns about him, that won’t change. She’ll find something to do, something to learn, someone to be. She’ll take a new name. She’ll meet people who aren’t good or bad, just people. She’ll learn how to walk without a gun in her pocket. Maybe she’ll see something beautiful. But she won’t ever see him again, except in her dreams.

**Author's Note:**

> When I posted The Idyll five years ago, I said I would write a sequel, and I did. My feelings about this game and this ship are more complicated than I can express. From the start, I've been frustrated by the refusal of the game and many subsequent fics to fully address the implications of Infinite's ending. Even Burial at Sea sidesteps it, since it's clear in that game that Elizabeth simply cannot understand Booker and Comstock as the same person, nor can she live without Booker, real or hallucination. I'm tired of doublespeak and implication, so I wrote something far more explicit.


End file.
